Video gaming may get its own exclusion list in Illinois

Sunday

Apr 20, 2014 at 5:00 PM

By Tobias WallGateHouse Media Illinois

SPRINGFIELD — While state lawmakers grapple with planned casino expansion in Illinois, legislation that would help the Illinois Gaming Board better police video gaming awaits them when they return from their spring break.

One of the tools the board uses to keep criminals and problem gamblers away from casinos is an exclusion list, and Senate Bill 2797 would create a new list under the Video Gaming Act.

Sen. Ira Silverstein, D-Chicago, sponsored the Senate bill, which passed 50-0 on April 2. Highwood Democratic Rep. Scott Drury is sponsoring it in the House.

Gene O’Shea, self-exclusion program director for the Illinois Gaming Board, said the board brought the legislation to the General Assembly because history has shown that with gambling expansion comes an influx of people who want to take advantage of it.

“The exclusion list (offered by Silverstein and Drury) is more of a business thing to weed out the bad apples,” O’Shea said.

He said if the gaming board learns that someone applying for a permit to buy, sell, transport or operate terminals has a criminal history related to the gaming industry, those individuals would be put on the list.

However, some are concerned that while the type of list described in the draft legislation might keep criminals out of the business, it does nothing to keep problem gamblers away from the 16,000-plus video gaming terminals throughout the state.

But, given the numbers, O’Shea said “that’s not practical,” meaning there would need to be someone at the door of each of the state’s 4,100 video gaming sites checking IDs and cross-referencing them against a list.

Criminals, addicts

Exclusion lists are not new to Illinois gambling as lawmakers have turned to them twice in the past two decades.

The first exclusion list was created in the early 1990s, when the state first legalized riverboat gambling. O’Shea said that first list currently does for riverboats what the proposed list would do for video gaming.

“The first people on the (original) list were the cheats that we caught,” O’Shea said. “The last couple were organized crime-type individuals.”

The list contains 20 individuals and is published on the gaming board website.

The second list, created in 2002, is the voluntary self-exclusion list, made up of people who identify themselves as problem gamblers. Anyone on the self-exclusion list could be arrested if they’re found in a casino.

O’Shea said there were 10,626 people on that list as of April 15. He said the number of people added to the list has begun to level out at around 800 each year, down from a pre-recession high of 1,208 additions in 2006.

But Anita Bedell, executive director of the Illinois Church Action on Alcohol and Addiction Problems, said exclusion lists don’t really help keep gambling addicts out of casinos.

“The gaming board will not require the casinos to seek ID before people come on the boats. The only way to ID people is if they win $1,200 or more,” Bedell said. “We’ve had people get on the list but then continue to gamble knowing the only way to get in trouble is if you win.”

She said catching only the lucky or talented problem gamblers doesn’t solve the problem if all the other addicts who lose are still allowed to gamble.

O’Shea agreed that nabbing self-excluded gamblers who win $1,200 or more is one policy casinos use to keep problem gamblers away, but it’s not the only one.

He wouldn’t say what other methods are used because it would compromise casino enforcement tactics, but he said since the list was created, there have been 3,477 instances where self-excluded gamblers had been caught, with 3,399 of the incidents resulting in arrests.

Winnings lost

Another criticism Bedell levied against casinos is that when self-excluded gamblers are caught, their winnings are confiscated.

“When someone is caught, they confiscate the money. Nothing happens to the casinos. There is stolen money being lost at those boats,” she said.

Again, O’Shea agreed. Self-excluded gamblers who get caught do have their money taken away. He said the most a casino has ever confiscated was $22,800, and the least was a penny. But they don’t keep any of it.

As of last week, O’Shea said, riverboats in Illinois had confiscated $1.5 million of winnings from self-excluded gamblers, who then get to decide which of three addiction centers their money goes to.

So far, the Outreach Foundation for Problem and Compulsive Gamblers has received $579,708.69, the Illinois Council on Problem Gambling has gotten $499,923.72, and the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery has received $369,154.14.

O’Shea knows the numbers down to the penny because he updates them every day.

“That’s what I do all the time here. That’s what keeps me the busiest,” he said.

It keeps Phil Schere busy, too. He’s the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery administrative director and said the institute has treated pathological gamblers for 20 years in a structured addiction program.

“We use that (confiscated) money to defray the costs of people who have problems but can’t afford to complete their treatment,” he said.

“We’ve kind of gone through phases with gambling, and each time it’s ended badly because of the problems it creates,” Schere said.

He said studies have shown that increased access to gambling leads to more people who develop gambling addictions.

But when asked whether the institute would support gambling expansion in Illinois if there were more safeguards in place, Schere deferred.

“We don’t take a pro or con issue on whether that’s good or bad,” he said. “We know that when people are involved in those activities, some people are going to have trouble. We want to be there to help them.”